Steel products such as bars, rods, shapes and tubes of steel after having been formed by hot rolling are sorted according to an ordered length, size, specification, standards, presence of flaw, defects and other surface conditions, and are bundled into predetermined number of units and a predetermined shape before shipping.
The present invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for sorting, thereby making it possible to sort these steel products flowing along a sorting line, efficiently and correctly with quite a simple equipment.
It is a current tendency that the users or customers designate the lengths of products, with varying changes of length in the order of hundreds of millimeters so that the number of kinds of the products is increasing. For achieving a higher yield rate, therefore, it is desired to increase the number of the sorting beds. However, as will be explained later in more detail with reference to the drawings, the conventional sorting method requires a drastic increase of the installation cost, as well as lowered rate of operation of each sorting bed, when the number of the sorting beds is increased. The increased number of sorting beds also necessitates greater mill floor space and widened conditions of operation, and makes unmanned operation difficult. Furthermore, since the steel products are conveyed a long distance in groups, various troubles are liable to occur such as misalignment of the ends of products, overlapping and so forth, resulting in a lowered treating efficiency.